Avenue of the Giants!

So last week me and Fahad made a road trip to the Avenue of the Giants. Neither wikipedia nor any photographs can do any justice to this place  - it has to be seen to be believed.

         What is it? The Avenue of the Giants is an avenue through the Redwood forest in Northern California. Redwood trees are some of the tallest trees in the world and there are many trees here that are taller than 100m. The forests are around 270 miles north of the Bay Area and our plan was to go and come back in a day.  The avenue is around 32 miles long and used to be part of US 101 in some bygone era.

          We headed out around 7 AM in the morning from Sunnyvale (30 miles south of San Francisco). We were going to have coffee near the Golden Gate bridge but armed with my amazing driving skills, I missed an exit and we had to scout for the nearest coffee shop. Lo behold, we ended up in a beautiful town called Sausalito right on the banks of the bay! Just the road down there is breathtaking and we ended up having breakfast right near the water. We felt like we had landed in a quaint old village, untarnished and untouched by mankind. You cannot believe this place is 20 minutes from Downtown San Francisco! It is the ideal location to have breakfast on a Sunday morning.

         Having had a satisfying breakfast we set off again. After a long drive with more coffee stops we reached this town called Miranda on the Avenue of the Giants. Google had suggested a place called Avenue Cafe here and to our chagrin they were closed. Their timings for Sunday was 9am - 1pm (weird) and we reached around 1.30. The gas station there looked like it had stopped working in 1950. Talk about bad luck. Not seeing any tall trees pissed us off more and we took off again, scouting for gas stations. And suddenly the trees grew taller and broader.

          Oh my god, the trees were so big we couldn't believe our eyes! You have to actually see them to believe. There was a river running through the forest which we would spot from time to time, sometimes going over it on a bridge. The road is crazy narrow and curvy and half the time I was scared I was going to bash into a huge tree! These trees are so big they can hold probably 2 cars side by side. We went past the avenue to a town called Rio Dell to buy gas and get some lunch. I had one of the best burritos in my life there - maybe cos I was hungry - but it was homely too. And then we came back, replenished with fuel for both the car and ourselves, and hit the Avenue again. We had an hour of sunlight left and made the best of it. Near the town Miranda, there is a drive through tree - a tree so broad you can drive your car through it! This was so crazy we did it twice!

       After taking some customary snaps with the trees, and a few crazy videos, we started out for home around 5 pm. After an exhausting drive we reached home around 10 pm and promptly crashed.

       So to summarize, we covered almost 600 miles in one day, saw some really tall trees and had fun. Crazy, eh?!

Afterword
The photos are on Facebook (yes, we HAD to take some)
Shall upload the videos soon.

Here is a sample!